1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a multi-panel collapsible door assembly having a door storage system that can be installed in an opening of a building.
2. Prior Art
A multi-panel collapsible door assembly having a door storage system for storing one or more door constituted by a number of serially connected panels in a totally collapsed condition has been proposed as an alternative for foldable door assemblies.
There have been disclosed a number of systems of this category, e.g. in Japanese Patent Publication No. 61-40985 and No. 64-6484 that teach various panel connector devices. These disclosures are directed to various devices for serially connecting a number of panels that form a sliding door in such a manner that the panels may be totally collapsed, each panel carrying such a device rigidly fitted to an end close to an adjacent panel.
While such a collapsible sliding door is normally suspended from and moved along a guide rail running above the door and is stored in a door storage area in a collapsed condition when it is not used, the storage area is in the form of a diamond as viewed from above, with the guide rail separated into two members and extending slanted or in an inclined manner from the guide rail into the space of the room where the door assembly is installed, making the configuration of the storage area unusual and inconvenient for daily use.
Such a diamond-shaped storage area is formed mainly for mechanical reasons in terms of the length of the movable connector used for connecting a pair of adjacent panels, the range of sliding movement of the movable connector, and other factors.
However, with such a conventional collapsible sliding door assembly, since the storage areas are realized in the form of a diamond as viewed from above, the space required for the storage areas inevitably is large, particularly when a sliding door is constituted by a large number of panels. Such door storage area is located inside the room, and since the diagonal of the diamond-shaped door storage area for the door becomes very large, consequently the effective space of the room is significantly reduced.
Moreover, a series of experiments of repeatedly closing and opening the doors of collapsible sliding door assemblies of various conventional types proved that panels can be blocked near the end of their respective guide rails, making door collapsing and storing operations not smooth and unsatisfactory.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a multi-panel collapsible door assembly having a door storage system with one or more door storage areas perpendicularly extending from the guide rails for guiding the door panels, such that the panels are smoothly moved into and pulled out of the storage areas, and where the panels are stored almost parallel with the guide rails in a totally collapsed condition.